For me, this toxic way of thinking (which, by the way is a lie) has negatively impacted not only my ability to have a successful romantic relationship, but also my ability to form friendships within the gay community. I’ve been so conditioned to believe that “gay” is wrong that when I meet other gay people who I could befriend, they always begin at a deficit in my mind. I expect that them to be shallow or flaky, or I assume that they have the wrong motives. Basically, I project all of the negative images that I was told to believe about gay people and that deep down I fear are true of myself onto perfectly innocent bystanders. And sometimes when you expect the worst out of people, you bring out the worst in them. Thus begins the vicious cycle of the self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyone who is close to me will tell you that my friends and family hold the highest spots on my priority list. And I will tell you that I have the most amazing, long-lasting, fulfilling friendships on the planet. Those friendships are what have sustained me throughout the past ten years and long before that. What is interesting about these friendships, however, is that 99% of them have been with straight people. In fact, if you did a demographic analysis of my social circle, you’d find that my average friend is a 50-year-old, single, straight female (OK, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it’s pretty close). I wouldn’t trade these friendships for the world, but it does make for an early bedtime when hanging out on the weekends…
The bottom line is that I’ve never allowed myself to believe that I could have fulfilling friendships within the gay community and I’ve put up a lot of walls when it comes to those relationships. In fact, even to this day I experience a high level of anxiety anytime I’m entering an environment where the crowd is predominantly gay. It’s a very self-defeating thing to experience. But recently, something has begun to change, and for the better.
In the past two years since relocating to a new city I have, for the first time in my life, found friendship with a group of gay guys that has brought about a whole new layer of healing in my soul that I didn’t even know how to reach. It’s a group that I pretty much stumbled into, but it has allowed me to see myself with new eyes and perhaps even more importantly has shown me a whole new profile of the face of God.
My straight friends, especially those who’ve known me for over 20 years, really do get me most of the time. But even though they get me, there are still some things that I just can’t expect them to understand. There are just some things you experience as a gay person in America that non-gay people can’t quite understand. Having to be at least partially “in the closet” at work and worrying about your job security, for instance. Or going on that date where the guy you are really into tells you that he’s HIV positive. Or living in a reality where you have to think about HIV at all. Or living with the fear that you may be assaulted on the street or in the park just because you’re dressed too fashionably and don’t look tough enough to defend yourself. These are things that gay men have to think about every day, if not consciously then subconsciously.
Fourth of July weekend was a tough one for me this year. It was one of those times when I could barely find the will to leave my house. Feeling depressed, isolated and generally miserable, I finally mustered the courage to meet some friends for drinks for just one evening of the holiday weekend. After a valiant but failed attempt at social lubrication, I found myself sitting on a curb next to my car, head in my hands, crying my eyes out (not a good look for a thirty-something year old). At that very moment I got a text message from one of these friends who has become a lifeline for me. He’d seen me a few minutes prior and saw something in my eyes that he recognized all too well in himself and thought I just might need some help.
An hour and a half and a box of snotty tissues later, I finally got up from my friends sofa to head home. I had poured out my heart to him while he listened and just supportively held my hand. There was nothing sexual about it, nothing self-serving in the least. What was actually so amazing about that experience is that I wouldn’t have had to say a single word. My tears were enough. He got me.
These guys all get me. They get my faith commitment because they share it (I met two of them in a Bible study, after all!). They get what it means to be a single gay man trying not to “settle” in a shallow pool of dating prospects. And the best part is that I would trust any one of them with my life. They love me for who I am. I don’t have to change or hide a thing. This has been my breakthrough of friendship, and just as my breakthrough at LaSalle Street Church helped reconcile me to a community of faith, this new bond of friendship has helped reconcile me to another community that I am inextricably linked to; a community of gay people that is more tightly connected and supportive than I’d ever given them credit for.
Thanks, boys (and you know who you are), for teaching me about the tenacity of true friendship that is possible within our complicated yet resilient little world.
